Exosquad Third Season
ExoSquad Cast and Creator Comments Michael Edens (story editor for the second season): "Ketzer was lying when he said Nara would become just like him. In our minds, he was always tinkering with his process and really didn't know exactly how it would change her. The fact that her DNA might be subtly different because of her birth on Venus might have been a factor, too. We had not completely worked it out yet -- that was to be part of a third season, if it had been done. The general thinking was that Ketzer's "creations" would be important to defeating the new alien menace -- the exact nature of which, we had also not worked out yet. About a third season and/or movie. We (the story editor and writers and immediate Universal executives) wanted to do a third season and had started some general discussions. All we really knew: (1) as I said earlier, Nara and Ketzer's "creations" would be important in the fight against the aliens; (2) the unactivated clone of Phaeton seen in the last episode would be activated to lead the Neosapiens against the aliens alongside the humans -- raising a question of how much he could be trusted; (3) Dark Matter would be the key to defeating the aliens -- that was why they got rid of the planet Chaos, the source of the Dark Matter used in the series. There were also plans for a spin-off series tentatively called "Exo-Pirates" which would have followed the adventures of those pirates, jumptroops, and E-frame pilots who were on Chaos when it was "transported" to another dimension/part of the universe (hadn't decided on which yet) when the aliens first invaded. A third season and Exo-Pirates was supposed to dove-tail so that Exo-Pirates ended with the planet Chaos returning to the Solar system in time to help the ExoFleet and its allies defeat the aliens with the Dark Matter from Chaos. As for the movie, we had begun some preliminary work on that, but had not gotten very far. We were leaning toward insectoid aliens with a collective consciousness, but then stepped back from that because of story-telling concerns -- i.e. what would a collective consciousness mean for being able to do something without all the other aliens knowing what you were up to. Also, a couple of Universal executives thought it might be a better idea to tell a story for the movie from the Neosapien War that we had not told in the series. The writers did not want to do this. While we were kicking around these ideas, we did not know anything about a possible ExoSquad/Robotech deal. I was surprised when I saw the two lines brought together in the toys. I would have been happy to incorporate stuff from Robotech if it would not tie our hands on what we could do with the ExoSquad side of things. How human is the new DeLeon? Once again, we had not fully worked that out. You're right in saying that he could not reproduce. Other than that, we were not sure exactly what issues would be raised. I can't tell you how much of this stuff is done on the fly and is dictated by your feelings for the growth and development of the characters as the scripts start coming in. We started off the second season with a rather broad outline that was mainly about the ebb-and-flow of how the war would shape up -- modeled on a vague pattern of WWII with the war in Europe and the Pacific mixed together: for example, we had our "Battle of the Bulge" episodes when the Neosapiens tried to retake Venus and the capture of the moon was based on the battle for Okinawa, the final battle for Chicago was the Battle of Berlin with Phaeton's bunker substituting for Hitler's bunker -- of course all these things had our original twist, but we thought that if we followed the outline of how an actual major war went, then we would never stray from the realism that made ExoSquad so good and that it would help translate into how we dealt with our characters. Originally, we didn't know that when Ketzer injected Nara, it would lead to Nara killing Phaeton in the end. But as the series developed, it just felt right, so we did it. Originally, we had no intention of bringing DeLeon back. As a matter of fact, we had originally intended to kill DeLeon on Mars when it blew up -- if you carefully watch the episode set in Australia "The Dream War" (I believe that's the title), you will see that DeLeon's death on Mars is foreshadowed there. One of the executives at Universal strongly objected to killing a major character so we settled for the temporary supposed death of Torres. However, an executive at Playmates found out about our original idea and really liked it -- so we killed DeLeon on the moon and then brought him back, primarily because of the Black Box idea we built into the Mars episode. The character of Thrax is also one of those who took on a life of his own. Originally, he was only supposed to appear in one episode -- when he dueled with Takagi on Mercury. But we fell in love with his character and brought him back as a disaffected Neosapien in the Ketzer episodes. Of all the series I've worked on, I'm proudest of ExoSquad. I still see Jeff Segal (the executive producer and one of the creators of the series) from time to time and we still talk about it fondly. We'd love to do something more with the series and the characters. I've always encouraged everyone I know to contact Universal to get the whole series released on DVD. If that were done and if the DVDs sold well enough, it might spark some interest on their end to continue the series. That's the only way I can see to resurrect ExoSquad." "ExoSquad was the high point of my animation career so far -- a real labor of love." "The main reason no third season or movie was ever produced was the sudden and almost complete collapse of the tv syndication market in animation. There was rapid change in the business in the mid-90s. There was a lot of media consolidation and synergies being created between in-house production companies and growing networks like the WB and UPN. A lot of independent stations were eaten up and taken into the new nets, who wanted to supply them with their own product. The weekday afternoon syndication times remaining were often filled with Oprah clone talk shows, which could be cheaply produced and were very successful -- at least for a few years. If you remember the time, it seemed like anybody who could ask a reasonably coherent question had their own talk show. Weekday afternoon animation blocks almost completely disappeared -- unless like the WB net they were filled with exclusively Warner Brothers animation. Universal syndication scrambled and actually sold the show broadly, but the times were almost all terrible -- there were a couple of places where we were on at 4 in the morning. In the few decent time slots we got, the show drew a good audience. It was an old tv problem -- the few people who actually saw ExoSquad liked it a lot, but most people didn't even know it existed. Overall, the numbers for ExoSquad were disappointing, which in turn led to a less-than-enthusiastic drive by Universal to commit to a movie. Jeff Segal, who aside from being executive producer and one of the creators of ExoSquad was president of Universal Family Entertainment and its off-shot, Universal Cartoon Studios, tried to keep the movie idea alive, but Universal's feature film division was cool to the idea. When the ratings numbers finally killed a third season, that also killed the movie. I talked to Jeff yesterday, and he would still like to make an ExoSquad movie. The only problem now is that, since he is no longer with Universal, he would have to get their permission to develop a movie. It's an extreme long shot, but keep your fingers crossed. As I said the other day, if we could get them to release the whole series on DVD and it sold reasonably well, we have a better chance at getting them to do more with the franchise -- a third season or a movie. Unfortunately, we're stuck in the same position Star Trek was in after its network run was canceled. We have a relatively-speaking small, but devoted fan base and an excellent series. Syndicated re-runs allowed enough people to see Star Trek to resurrect the franchise, bringing movies and spin-off series and a fortune for Paramount." Bob Forward (author of Betrayal and coauthor of The Embassy): "Exosquad was a unique experience as the shows were worked out beforehand by the story editors and the writers were given fairly detailed outlines to work from. In other words, I knew very little other than what was spelled out for me." David Kaye (voice of Draconis, Hallas, and Vince Pelligrino): "Robbie Benson was recorded separately in LA. Gordon Hunt the director always read his lines or one of us would read 'em just to keep the flow. I was brought in in the 2nd and 3rd season and had a great time. Sometimes if Gordon couldn't make it up from LA to direct, we'd do a phone patch. We could hear him in our headphones (most of the time !!) This always gave Gary Chalk a chance to throw something at somebody !!" Rob Morton (voice of Typhonus and Peter Tanaka): "In total, there were only 52 episodes made. We did the pre-lay (voice) at Ocean Sound in Vancouver. We were patched through to L.A. and worked with the director and producer over the phone lines. It is the most fun work that a performer can do. No costumes, no make up, no lights, etc..... Coffee and spit balls were the normal. It was a very good crew to work with and if you look around at other cast lists such as Reboot, Beasties, GI. Joe, you will see many of the same names appearing. You will also see many of these names appear on the credits of shows like X-Files, Outer Limits, Poltergeist and Millennium. It is unfortunate that it was canceled. I rather liked the continuing nature of the scripts. It wasn't just the same old characters meandering through different unjoined scenarios. Reminded me of Babylon 5.... As for where the scripts were heading, we were never informed. It is common practice to keep these sort of things secret. We would only be given scripts for the two episodes that we would be recording that day. Sometimes we would be given a hint as to what might happen in the next episode but that usually only involved the death of a character.... " Wally Burr (voice casting and first season voice director): "Universal wanted to take advantage of the Vancouver, B.C. actors' fee structure then in effect (the main attractions were considerably lower session fees than those demanded by SAG as well as a "no residual payments" provision as part of the B.C. contract. The studio also balked at weekly airfares and per diem for me to round-trip L.A.-to-Vancouver, so they asked me to direct via phone patch from L.A., a technique that I'd previously used successfully on some 70 "Conan The Adventurer" episodes, 13 softer "Conan" episodes for CBS-TV and 26 "My Little Pony Tales" scripts..." All credit and rights from the information above goes to: Patrick Danner's ExoSquad page. Theories I've been wondering for many of years, since Exosquad has last aired, what season 3 would have been like. From my constant studying of information from writers, artwork, artists, and other contributers this is what I believe could have been season 3's plot. I will help support my thoughts with FAQs from the show and writers. At the end of "Beyond Chaos" we see four space vessels which many people believed to be three due to not many screen shots of all the vessels. If you look carefully at the images there are four types. One that looks like a Blue Whale, another like a Jellyfish, the backed of a vessel that looks like a type of Scorpion Fish, and a vessel like a mix of Octopus/Stingray. All of the alien spaceships look a lot like under water sea creatures. Each one is different with its own style. The vessels may be living creatures or bodies of creatures that the aliens have used to construct space vessels out of. Knowing that all of the vessels but the Whale looking ship are sea creatures that use venom for defines or to kill, they must be war ships. It seems possible their weapons are the tentacles, stingers, and venom exuded from the vessels body. The venom may have acidic properties, capable of melting armor, metal, and flesh. Maybe their weapons shoot venom in some cases. The tentacles of some vessels could be used to absorb power or paralyze enemy ships. Jellyfish and Octopi use tentacles to capture their pray. On top of the Jellyfish vessel there appears to be a smaller jellyfish-like vessel floating above it. This might be small fighter vessel or drone from the main ship. Potentially they would send them to paralyze other ships in space. The Whale looking vessel may use its vocalization for sonar like submarines. This idea has been used in many sci-fi films, comics, and cartoons before. Michael Edens, story editor for the second season, remarked that the staff originally planned the aliens to be Insectoids. Additionally, he commented that the Pirates' Dark Matter, Albrecht Ketzer's experiments, and the unactivated clone of Phaeton would have played a great role in fighting them. With this information, I believe the aliens were to be Insectoids that used the remains of under water sea creatures to build their vessels. By using their bodies as the general lay out for their spacecraft, they also used the creatures natural abilities for attack and defense. The orange lights glowing around the vessels may have been a shield or device for propulsion through space. I'm not sure why they glow, but I am leaning more towards them being devices for propulsion. In the screen shots you do not see any type of engine exhaust. That may mean that they have mastered a new way of propulsion through space. After they had arrived and made planet Chaos disappear, they enter the solar system and are believed to be heading inward. It seems likely they are headed to Mars. In Episodes "The Lost Patrol", "Call of the Unknown", and "Heart of Mars" Able Squad discover an alien installation which contains a radio transmitter deep underground. As soon as find their way out, the facility starts emitting indecipherable radio signals. Both Terrans and Neosapiens try to seize the alien technology for themselves. A battle ensues, and the installation takes critical damage and self-destructs, destabilizing the Martian surface. I believe this radio transmitter is made by the Insectoids. I also have a theory on the insectoids origins. Before humans evolved on earth, there was a period of time where insects were the largest animals on Earth. The conditions on the planet would have been suitable for insect life. It would have been here that the Insectoids would have evolved, become intelligent, and developed ways to leave the planet. At this time, there may have been large sea creatures from which they could make their vessels. As far as why they left earth to begin with, I have a theory on that as well. Perhaps the Insectoids needed to leave Earth because the oxygen concentration was getting too low. Perhaps they saw an asteroid heading to earth that would wipe out all the creatures. by Lee Lacy, edited by Jack Glasken Category:Production